The Book of Life and Death

"Where am I?" Lin Shu struggled desperately to open her eyes, but all she could see was dense fog. It surrounded her in every direction, and she could not make out a thing.

"What happened to me...? Why... No, I encountered an explosion and an attack." Lin Shu recalled the dazzling firelight and the sound of the explosion. Even as a police officer from the Criminal Investigation Brigade, she had never truly witnessed such a scene before. It had been like a real battlefield.

"And then... then I think—I died?"

"Have I... already... died?"

"Then where is this place?"

The dense fog condensed and shifted with the wind, gradually thinning. Only then did Lin Shu begin to see the scenery around her.

She found herself apparently standing upon a white expanse of land. Looking upward, she saw swirling smoke and hazy white mist veiling the entire world and blocking all her vision. In every direction stretched an endless sea of white fog.

She wore an ancient-style white robe, much like the undergarments worn in antiquity. Her hair hung loose, and her bare feet rested upon the ground.

"What a bizarre place?" Lin Shu kept turning in circles, looking in every direction as she tried to figure out exactly where she was.

At that moment, the white ground beneath her feet suddenly began to writhe. It looked like a black river, flowing and twisting until it covered the entire ground.

"What is this?" Lin Shu fearfully stood on tiptoe, constantly dodging the places where the black flow passed.

That presence, resembling black smoke and ink wash, finally settled into place. Upon the white ground, it formed upright characters.

Only then did Lin Shu realize in shock that the thing beneath her feet was not ground at all, but a vast ancient book—an ancient book as enormous as a mountain. Its white pages were as smooth and supple as white jade, radiating a faint glow.

The black marks revealed upon it were words written in the ancient book.

"How is this possible? Where is this? Hell?"

Lin Shu kept retreating, the soles of her feet rubbing against the pages beneath her. They felt more like hard jade. The surrounding mist kept closing in as she desperately tried to flee this terrifying, ghastly place, only to discover that she seemed to be walking in place all along.

"What in the world is going on? Is this Heaven? Or the netherworld and Hell?" Lin Shu collapsed to the ground, her face deathly pale. She looked helplessly in every direction, then finally lifted her gaze toward the heavens.

At that moment, she felt like an ant placed upon a dinner plate. Some terrifying existence seemed to be looking down at her from above the clouds and mist, just as one might look down at an ant upon a tabletop.

Just then, she saw that the words upon the ground had finally finished forming. They were ancient characters, resembling the legendary bird seal and phoenix script, or perhaps ancient oracle-bone script. Yet the instant she looked at them, she could understand their meaning.

The characters looked as though they had been carved out with knives and axes, yet also written with a brush. They carried a sharp, solemn, murderous air.

What horrified her even more was that the very top did not say anything else. It bore—her name.

"Surname and given name: Lin Shu"

"Date of birth: The Yi-Hai Year, Sixth Month, Sixteenth Day, Mao Hour!"

"Native place: Xiayang Town, Lin County, Yubeiwei Port!"

Lin Shu seemed to realize something. She ran wildly across the ancient seal script, panic sweeping over her, and looked toward the very bottom.

At last, she stopped. There, at the bottom, she saw four enormous blood-red characters.

"Lifespan exhausted!"

The blood-red characters looked as though they had been smeared with human blood. At that moment, she could even see the crimson liquid flowing.

Those blood-red characters were like an irresistible seal stamped upon Lin Shu's fate, telling her starkly that she was dead, that her fate could not be reversed and death could not be resisted.

"Dead? Really dead?" Lin Shu had realized it long ago, but even now she still found it impossible to believe. Clutching her loosened hair, she wore an expression of utter rejection in her eyes.

"This... this is the legendary..."

"When the King of Hell says you will die at the third watch, who dares keep you until the fifth?"

Lin Shu was shocked and terrified. She wanted to angrily demand an explanation, but in the end she could only let out a bitter laugh. Her entire body was filled with powerlessness. Before such an existence—an existence as sublime as gods and devils, amid a scene straight out of myth—the helplessness of a mortal was displayed on her to the fullest.

"But... I..."

"I don't want to die!" Lin Shu sat cross-legged on the ground, looking around before throwing her head back and roaring toward the sky.

Her voice echoed through the air, but received no response.

"Lin Yu, Big Sister is really going to die this time!" Lin Shu knelt upon the white pages, cradling her face as tears streamed down incessantly.

"Haha! Perhaps I should say I'm sacrificing myself! At least I died in the line of duty!" Thinking of her younger sister, Lin Shu cried and laughed at the same time, as if she had sunk into her memories.

At that moment, the clouds and mist in the sky suddenly parted. Light, as if cast down from the immortal realm, shone through from the summit of the clouds.

A gigantic white-jade calligraphy brush descended from above the clouds. It wiped away the four characters "Lifespan exhausted" and continued them with a single line of great characters—"Extended lifespan by one hundred and twenty years!"

The brush fell, and the clouds dispersed. The brush withdrew, and the mist gathered again.

The surrounding dense fog instantly wrapped around Lin Shu. In the blink of an eye, she vanished along with the dispersing mist from the ancient book, which was as vast as a mountain to her, disappearing from this strange and uncanny world.

Within a gigantic palace pavilion, the pillars were white jade and the roof was gold. The domed ceiling was inlaid with every kind of gemstone. Fang Xiu wore a Daoist robe and sat cross-legged before an ancient-style desk.

A white ledger lay before him. On one page was written Lin Shu's name. Fang Xiu set down his brush, and the pages automatically rolled backward, revealing Lin Housheng, Black Fiend, and Chen Jin written on the preceding pages.

The pages closed completely of their own accord. Upon the black leather cover were three ancient seal-script characters—Book of Life and Death!

Beneath the Book of Life and Death was Fang Xiu's name, as though proclaiming who owned the ledger.

Fang Xiu stood and picked up the Book of Life and Death. He stepped forward, and his entire body swept through the palace buildings like a wisp of smoke, arriving beneath the Necro Tree at the edge of the cliff behind the palace.

He saw that the Necro Tree's roots, which had originally extended into the Sea of Light, now numbered two more. Fang Xiu released the Book of Life and Death, and it instantly transformed into a beam of light that fused into the tree's roots. It was itself a projected incarnation of the Necro Tree's roots.

This so-called Book of Life and Death was precisely used to record the existences that had established connections with the Necro Tree. It was also a part of the Necro Tree.

At this moment, the pages contained only four names. Including Fang Xiu, there were merely five.

"Perhaps one day, I'll be able to write down everyone's names—the names of all living things, and every existence in the world."

"How miraculous!"

"How is this possible? Unbelievable! Truly unbelievable!"

"She's undergoing a second phase of growth and development! She's like an infant, secreting various growth hormones. Her body is adjusting itself like a precision instrument, as if... as if she's being reborn from a cocoon..." The voice sounded utterly shocked, filled with the sensation of having its entire worldview shattered.

"Her wounds are healing rapidly. The necrotic muscles and bodily tissues are growing back as well. Look... look... even the four severed fingers are growing back. How is this possible? Regeneration of severed limbs—the severed limbs are regenerating!"

"Incredible! Truly too incredible! If I hadn't witnessed this myself, I absolutely would never have believed it."

"This is the most precious clinical data and experimental subject. We..."

"No. She belongs to a special classified department. Whatever ideas you have, keep them buried in your hearts. What matters most now is taking advantage of this precious opportunity to record all the medical data and changes in the subject's bodily condition. This may be the crucial opportunity that opens the door to the human body and the human genome."

In her dazed state, Lin Shu kept hearing people talking. Blurry afterimages appeared before her eyes.

She wanted to scream, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not make a sound. She wanted to sit up, but her body was completely beyond her control.

"Ah!"

Lin Shu finally opened her eyes and abruptly sat up, gasping for breath. The glaring light around her and the sunlight streaming through the windows made her feel extremely uncomfortable.

She shielded her eyes and slowly looked around. Everything seemed like a dream.

"Me? I came back to life?" Lin Shu stared at her surroundings in disbelief. She saw that this was a special ward, with seven or eight doctors gathered around her, along with several nurses.

"Enough! The patient in Ward Thirteen is awake!"

"The patient in Ward Thirteen is awake!"

Cheers seemed to come from outside. Many people gazed at Lin Shu excitedly, as if they were looking at some miraculous legend.

"Ah! Hiss, hiss!" Only then did Lin Shu feel as though countless ants were gnawing at her entire body. A violent, aching soreness and pain spread through her bones and muscles.

Only then did she see that both her hands were wrapped in bandages. Looking again, she found her entire body covered in them, bundled up like a sticky rice dumpling.

At that moment, the door opened, and a middle-aged man entered, his entire body likewise wrapped in bandages. He appeared to be about the same age as Lin Shu's father. He was Lin Shu's superior and the leader of the Abnormal Affairs Investigation Team, Zhou Yang.

The moment Zhou Yang entered and saw Lin Shu sitting there in a daze, he rushed over in overwhelming excitement. "Little Lin? You finally came back to life! It worked! That pill really worked!"

"Ah!???" Lin Shu's face was also covered in bandages. A puzzled look appeared in her eyes.